fell. “It’s OK. I didn’t hit my head,” I told my partner as I felt around my head for a nonexistent goose egg. I was about to learn first-hand what Plymouth nurse practitioner Mandi Dickey later reiterated during our April interview—you don’t need to lose consciousness in order to have a
concussion, nor do you need to hit your head. “Only about half really do,”
Dickey says. “The other half are from a whiplash type of injury, and only
10 percent of people lose consciousness.”
I chalked up my soreness to neck strain. My pupils could dilate, and my
memory of the incident was intact. The persistent headache? It gave me
pause, but I’d had friends growing up in sports who were laid up in bed for
weeks when they sustained concussions, unable to use screens or read. It
wasn’t until a sudden bout of nausea a few days after the fall that I reconsidered
my self-diagnosed clean bill of health. The nurse line advised I visit
urgent care, and I was informed I had a (still admittedly minor) concussion.
Dickey’s interest in
